Drafting,
Technical Illustration, and Printing

Every type of physical product design relies on technical illustration and 2‑D drawing to concisely communicate ideas, specifications, and instructions to people in design, development, and fabrication. Our goal for Rhino 5 is to make it easier to create 2‑D drawings and illustrations for every discipline in every notation system and visual style used around the world. Major areas of enhancement include:

Major additions and enhancements
to the annotation tools mean
you may no longer need to export to a 2‑D
CAD product to finish your drawings.

New commands

ConvertDots
- Convert objects created with
the Dot command to either point or
text objects.

DimArea
- Creates text or a leader that displays
the area of a closed curve, hatch, surface,
or mesh.

DimCurveLength
- Creates text or a leader that displays
the length of a curve.

DupDimStyle
- Creates a new dimension styles by copying
an existing style.

FindText
- Searches the model for the specified
text string.

HatchBase
- Sets the starting point of the pattern
for existing hatches.

HatchScale
- In a layout detail, hatch patterns
are scaled according to a detail's zoom
factor. In model space, hatch patterns
are scaled by HatchScale value.

ImportDimStyles
- Import dimension styles from other .3dm
files into the current document.

RevCloud
- Draws revision cloud curves.

ScaleDimstyle - Scale
the text size in the selected
dimension style.

SetCurrentDimStyle
- Sets the current dimension style.

Text Field - Text data
fields are a new feature for text and
leaders. Fields are "formulas"
that are evaluated while Rhino is running
and the result is displayed in the text.
The field options include:

numpages
- number of layout pages in the
document

pagenumber
- current layout page number

pagename - current layout page name

notes
- contents of the notes

date
- current date syntax

datemodified
- date this file was last saved

area - area
of a closed curve, hatch, surface,
or mesh

curvelength
- length of a curve

usertext
- usertext for a given object/key combination

documenttext
- document text from the document

filename
- path to the file

modelunits
- active model units

TextScale
- In a layout detail, text is scaled
according to a detail's zoom factor.
In model space, text is scaled by TextScale
value.

Enhancements

Dimensions

Dimension styles have been added
to the template files.

Scripting options for dimension
style name and arrow style have
been added.

Layout details can now be dimensioned
on the layout paper and will be
scaled appropriately.

A new Continue option
lets you place chained dimensions. Includes
Undo option.

The new Object option
allows selecting a curve or edge
to dimension.

Leader: Text masks can
be added as a leader property
override.

DimAngle - A new ability
to select arcs or polyline arc segments
has been added. Rhino automatically
draws extension lines from the arc ends
towards a center tic and place the angle
dimension between the extension lines.
The angle format now includes degrees-minutes-seconds.

DimRadius

A new PointOnCurve option aids
placement of the dimension. Leaders can pass through
the radius center. The arrow location
can be fixed
at the picked location on the curve
being dimensioned.

DimRotated - Remembers the last angle used as the
default for the next dimension

Draw Order control
provides control over which 2‑D curve,
text, dimension, or hatch is drawn in
front of another. This new feature also
controls the order the Detail Views
are drawn in a Layout. The new
commands are:

BringForward

BringToFront

ClearDrawOrder

SendBackWard

SendToBack

DisableClippingPlane
-Turns off selected clipping planes
in the active viewport.

ImportLayout
- Imports layout pages from another
Rhino file.

Multipage Layout
Print - Any or all of the layouts
can be printed at once.

ShowLayersInDetail
- Shows layers in detail views.

HideLayersInDetail
- Hides the selected layers in detail
views.

ShowSelectedInDetail
- Works just like the ShowSelected command
except it only works on objects that were previously hidden
with the HideInDetail command.

Enhancements

HideInDetail -
New options have been added to include/exclude
the active and inactive details.

Text and Dimension style
scaling - Text and dimension
can be now scaled differently in layout
viewports and model viewports. This
makes it easier to have text and dimension
appear at the same height in different
viewports when they are at different
scales in a layout.

Hybrid printing - Both raster
and vector printing is used when possible
to make higher quality prints.